Cleaning out the lint trap

Two weeks ago, 19-year-old USC student Chris King had given up on finding seasonal employment.

“I started off summer looking for a job,” said King, whose family lives in Huntington Beach. He applied to restaurants, retail establishments and other companies but found that competition was fierce; even his friends’ mothers were applying for the same jobs.

“It was really hard, and I didn’t get anything,” he said.

But then he stumbled on a lucrative niche business that may develop even after September sees him returning to school.

King’s mother was complaining about how their clothes dryer took an hour and a half to dry their clothes, so he helped his father clear the dryer duct with equipment they purchased.

They were shocked to find that their clothes then took half an hour or less to dry. King and his father saw a business opportunity.

“I went around the tract and got a lot of customers,” King said. He has lived in the same home his entire life and used to sell magazine subscriptions to his neighbors when he was in high school, so they were happy to have him clean their ducts.

King started with homes that were a similar floor plan to his own, which have 18 feet of ducting connecting the dryer vent to the outside of the home. He tells clients whose ducts cover similarly long distances that he’ll produce a large bag filled with lint by the time he has completed his procedure.

“After the first week, where we had done maybe 10 houses, I knew this was something to pursue,” King said.

King then branched out to other houses in the community and has now moved outside the neighborhood. King and his father created a flier showing how lint can collect in the duct, and listing the reasons to have it cleaned out — including saved time spent waiting for clothes to dry, saved money on utility bills and the removal of a potential fire or carbon monoxide hazard.

He’s since cleaned ducts at homes in neighboring communities and plans to build a website and recruit his friends to keep up the business while he’s away at school. King said his sister Stephanie also helps him with marketing his business.

He’s also eyeing the USC Marshall School of Business, where he now plans to apply, and encourages other teens to find a niche for themselves as well, if the economic downturn is affecting their summer employment plans.

“If you’re ambitious, have a strong mind and you stick to what you want to do, it’ll happen,” he said.

“This more than surpassed my expectations — I just wanted a job.”

Interested?

To contact Chris King’s College Student Dryer Duct Cleaning Service, call (714) 866-6875.